Monday, April 11, 2011

Is Information Energy?

I was presenting a poster on Saturday at the Kansas Academy of Science meeting (on my theory of thought) when a colleague said to me he had heard that "information IS energy." (Taking the old adage "knowledge is power" very literally.)  Perhaps he had in mind the "Information Converted to Energy" article of Nov. 19, 2010 posted on Physicsworld.com. But if information IS energy then, by relativity, it IS mass and, furthermore, a flashdrive (or other memory device) when travelling at high speeds would have more mass and information (and different amounts of information as seen by different observers).  This seems like a good counter argument against the idea that information IS energy.

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